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A Legendary Name Returns to England's Lineup

LONDON — After 55 years, one of the most evocative names in cricket is set to return to the highest level of the game as England begins its series of four five-day test matches against India.

Nick Compton, a 29-year-old batsman, will be following in the footsteps of his late grandfather, Denis Compton. It is as if a DiMaggio or Mantle were once more to take the field for the New York Yankees.

Denis Compton was one of cricket’s authentic giants. He was the most popular and charismatic English cricketer of his era, a stroke player of genius who played for England from 1937 to 1957, setting the all-time record for runs scored in a single season in 1947. If that were not enough, he also played soccer for Arsenal and England.

Such a heritage can be a mixed asset. Earlier this year Nick Compton said he knew he was making a success of his own career when he at least read a report about himself that did not include the words “grandson of ...”

“I am not as good as my grandfather,” he told the Daily Mail in May. “But who was and who is? Nobody in this country.”

Nor has his been the easy, rapid progress of gilded, anointed youth. He has been a professional for a decade, and to find real success, he had to leave Middlesex — his grandfather’s county, and where he played for a while alongside Ben Hutton, grandson another great, Len Hutton, who was the greatest of Denis Compton’s English contemporaries.

Moving to the western county of Somerset, whose lineup was already full of stroke makers, gave Compton the chance to be “that solid player who batted for a long time,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

With this came maturity. “When Jacques Kallis was playing against us earlier in the season, he said he had not learned his game fully until he was about 30,” he has recalled of a conversation with the South African giant. “I’ve had ups and downs during my career and now understand my game.”

By far the biggest of those ups came in the 2012 domestic season, when he led all English batsmen by scoring 1,494 runs at an average of 99.60. He was named Player of the Year by the Professional Cricketers Association and became the obvious choice to fill the gap in England’s batting lineup left when the captain, Andrew Strauss, retired.

While his heritage means few will question his selection, Compton’s elevation to succeed the Johannesburg-born Strauss means that England continues to include four South African-born batsmen in its top seven.

Compton was born and lived until age 15 in Durban, where he was briefly a colleague in the KwaZulu’s youth squad with Kevin Pietersen, whose return to England’s ranks will be its other main talking point in the series, which starts Thursday in Ahmedabad, India.

Pietersen has missed only one test match, but his absence after a falling out with team management and a number of colleagues has seemed much longer. At one point, it seemed his exile from the team might be permanent.

“We wouldn’t want K.P. to change too much because it is how he is that makes him special as a player,” another of England’s South African-born players, the wicketkeeper Matthew Prior, said Tuesday.

For most Indians, neither Compton nor Pietersen will matter very much compared with their national idol, Sachin Tendulkar, who has hinted that this might be the final series of a monumental 23-year record that has brought him almost every significant batting record.

“When I play in November, I will reassess things,” he told the Times of India last month. “I am 39 and don’t think that I have plenty of test cricket left in me.”

If this is the last hurrah for Tendulkar, who will extend his world record for test match appearances to 191 on Thursday, India intends to send him out on a high note.

India did not enjoy being swept in a four-match series in England last year, a resounding defeat that ended its tenure at No.1 in the world test match rankings.

It intends to repay that humiliation in full on its home soil.

While its captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, rejected the word “revenge” when speaking to journalists earlier this week, another team member, the all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, was not so circumspect.

India thinks it knows the secret to beating England: Its batsmen are notoriously susceptible to spin on Asian fields. While India has nobody quite as good as Saeed Ajmal, the Pakistani who humiliated England last year, its choice of three specialist spinners — Ravichandran Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha and Harbhajan Singh — in the 15-man squad for the first two tests reflects its belief that spin is the key.

Nor was England offered any practice against good spin in its three warm-up matches in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. “We would like to have faced more spin in the matches, but that hasn’t happened,” said England captain Alastair Cook. “Clearly there has been a message of some kind.”

Indeed there has — and it says that India has rarely gone into a series more determined.